Then, when he hears a sound, namely the swift energetic tramp of boots, he retreats into his apartment. But he doesn’t leave the peephole. If there’s a chance of saving the unhappy woman, he will open his door to her again, in spite of all the danger.

Frau Rosenthal isn’t even aware of passing anyone on her way up the stairs. She is driven by one thought, and one thought only, which is to reach the apartment and Siegfried as quickly as possible. But the Hitler Youth commander Baldur Persicke, on his way to morning roll call, stands there open-mouthed with astonishment as the woman almost brushes past him. Frau Rosenthal, that Frau Rosenthal who has been missing so many days, up and about this Sunday morning, in a dark stitched blouse and no star, a bunch of keys and a bracelet in one hand, laboriously dragging herself up the banister with the other—that’s how drunk she is! Early on Sunday morning, and already drunk out of her skull.

For an instant, Baldur stays where he is, completely dumbfounded. But when Frau Rosenthal turns the corner of the stairs, his mental powers return to him, and his mouth snaps shut. He has the feeling that the moment has come—he mustn’t make a mistake now! No, this time he will take care of the thing himself, and no one, not his father or brothers or Borkhausen, is going to foul it up for him.

Baldur waits till he is sure Frau Rosenthal has reached the Quangels’ floor, then creeps quietly back into his parents’ flat. Everyone is still asleep, and the telephone is in the hallway. He picks up the receiver and dials, then asks for a particular number. He is in luck: even though it’s Sunday, he gets put through, and to the right man. He quickly says his piece, then moves a chair over to the door, opens the door a crack, and prepares to sit and wait for half an hour or an hour, to be sure the quarry doesn’t slip away again…

At the Quangels’ only Anna is up and about, quietly puttering around the flat. In between she looks in on Otto, who is still fast asleep. He looks tired and tormented, even now, in sleep. As though something is leaving him no peace. She stands there and looks thoughtfully at the face of the man she has lived with day after day for almost thirty years. She has long since grown used to the face, the sharp birdlike profile, the thin, almost always shut mouth—it no longer frightens her, any of it. He’s the man to whom she has given virtually her whole life. Looks aren’t important…

But this morning she gets the impression that the face has become even sharper, the mouth even thinner, the furrows on either side of the nose even more deeply etched. He is worried, deeply worried, and she neglected to talk to him in time, to help him carry his load. This Sunday morning, four days after she received the news of the death of her son, Anna Quangel is once again firmly convinced not only that she has to stick it out with this man, but that her obstinacy was wrong in the first place. She ought to have known him better: he always preferred silence to speech. She always had to encourage him to speak—the man would never say anything of his own free will.

Well, today he will speak to her. He said he would, last night, on his return from work. Anna had had a bad day. When he ran off without any breakfast after she had spent hours waiting for him, and when he didn’t come home for dinner, when she realized that his shift had begun and he certainly wouldn’t come back until late, she had been in despair.

What had come over the man, ever since she let slip that unconsidered phrase? What drove him so remorselessly on? She knew him: ever since she’d said it, he’d been thinking only of how to prove to her that it was not “his” Führer at all. As if she had ever seriously meant it! She should have told him she had only said it in the first rush of grief and rage. She could have said quite other things about those crooks who had senselessly robbed her of her son’s life—but that happened to be the form of words that escaped her.

But now she had said it, and now he was here and there, running all sorts of risks to prove himself right and to show her, quite concretely if possible, how wrong she had been! Perhaps he wouldn’t be back. Perhaps he had already said or done something that got the factory direction or the Gestapo on his case—maybe he was already in prison! Restless as that calm man had been so early in the morning!

Anna Quangel can’t stand it, she can’t wait idly for him. She butters a couple of slices of bread, and sets off for the factory.